


All in All

by ectoBisexual



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Actors, Birthdays, Commission fic, F/M, Fluff, Miscommunication, surprise parties
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-23 21:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6130234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ectoBisexual/pseuds/ectoBisexual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sakura has forgotten his birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All in All

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you again to animefandomappreciation for commissioning me!  
> My commission info is here: http://cloverguts.tumblr.com/post/129385688821/andys-emergency-commissions-please-take-2  
> As always, contact me @ cloverguts.tumblr.com or dayna.mortimore@gmail.com

She’s forgotten his birthday.

That’s the only logical explanation. At first, he concedes, it isn’t a very big deal, because through his track record of birthdays, Sasuke has learnt not to get his hopes up. His life is mercurial enough as it is, a constant day-in and day-out of last minute plan changes, airplane tickets, and spur-of-the-moment interviews where he’s told to just _sit quiet and look pretty and your colleagues will do the talking._ His colleagues, right. Such is the life of your relationship with an actor being more important than your _being_ an actor.

(He knows that isn’t true, but still. If awards are anything to go off of. Once upon a time Sasuke would have thought he had a chance, but Sakura is amazing, and it’s all he can do to keep up with his roles and support her wherever she goes.)

Sasuke rolls over in bed, desperately wishing he could just hit snooze one last time. The sun glaring through his open blinds feels like far too much, the prison bar patterns burning his skin like acid. He glances at the source of the periodic blaring bouts of noise in the room. 11:44 AM. July 23. He’s twenty two today.

Sasuke pulls himself out of bed, groaning and running his hands through his hair. It isn’t often that he wakes up like this, feeling like his head is a door and the whole world is pounding on it. But, well. He did kind of drink his weight in liquor last night, which is something he doesn’t normally do. Sakura’s been acting weird lately. His other friends, too, but that’s not altogether unusual for them around this time of year, what with deals to sign and scripts to read over. When he first moved out here he thought it’d be a dream, getting to work his ass off in the industry the way his parents would have wanted, and as an added bonus, spending as much time as possible around his then-heavily-denied crush. Now it just seems like noise. Home, but noise. He’d had no idea where an emotional headache and a fifth of vodka could get you if you weren’t paying attention, and so far, if his _actual_ headache is anything to go by, this has been the worst birthday ever.

Here’s why he thinks Sakura has forgotten his birthday: she hasn’t texted him. Sakura texts him every morning and every night, even if it’s just an idle ‘good morning’, no punctuation or sentiment or anything else, either to let him know that she’s alive or that she doesn’t hate him. He appreciates the messages to quell the storm of doubt that so often arises in his stomach, finds them to be a comfort when he wakes up from a particularly loud dream with the fear of abandonment still swimming in the corners of his vision.

This morning: no text message. No happy birthday. Not even a _good morning._

Sasuke climbs out of the abyss of his covers, testing the strain of his muscles. They kind of catch in places, like the kink in his neck that he’s developed lately due to work stress and trying to figure out why his friends are suddenly too busy to hang out with him. Naruto, at least, has always been a failsafe for things like that, for showing up at a moment’s notice with a bottle of sweet sake and a grin that rings careless danger all over, but even he hadn’t come over last night when Sasuke had offered. Sakura, too, is reliable, but this is more in the sense of her being his girlfriend than anything else. And anyway, Sasuke could never think of her as a failsafe. These days she’s the first person he calls even when he isn’t bored.

Fridays are the worst days for productivity, so close to the weekend that everything else feels like punctuation to such. Sasuke dreads dragging his body down to the studio, running lines with people he’s still struggling to work with and listening to yet another lecture on how _if he wants to be the best he has to **listen,** for God’s sake, _all the while trying to keep himself satiated by the thought of a weekend of peace with Sakura out of the limelight. If he’s lucky, of course, and there aren’t any major award shows or parties or interviews or whatever else that she insists they always attend together. For such a successful actor, when it comes down to it, Sasuke couldn’t be more anti-social.

His phone rings as he’s stepping out of the shower.

Sasuke doesn’t want to say he lunges for it, but, well. A guy only has so much patience. He’s human, after all.

“Hel—”

“They need you at the studio earlier, to run lines.” Sakura’s voice is more clipped than usual, even for this time of morning, when Sasuke knows she has been up for a decent amount of hours on her morning run.

“Good morning,” he answers. He doesn’t let anything as crass as emotion creep into his voice, but just lets the words sit there, as smartass as they may seem.

“Morning,” she says, in that same clipped tone. “They want you by 12:30. I won’t be there. Naruto has your newest script.”

“Oh,” he says, but Sakura is already speaking before the impact of her words can seep through the line.

“Right. Goodbye, Sasuke.”

She hangs up on him.

She’s been known to hide her emotions when she can. A naturally emotional person (if you wanted to call anger issues that), the only way to survive in the city, in the industry, has since been to control the intonations of her voice, her words, how much emotion she’s willing to let through. Whilst she’s always been a little less guarded when it comes to Sasuke, there are times when even he can’t read what she’s feeling, what she could possibly be thinking. Nerves tighten the coil in his gut. Feeling a strange mix between nauseous and impassive, Sasuke heads for his clothes.

.

The pedestrian traffic on the way there is ridiculous, streets crowded with people nearly all the way back to his block. He curses himself for waking up late, and stops at a café on his way, needing about a pint of coffee just to get through the headache inducing amount of voices around him. On his way back out of the store he runs into a friend from a previous acting job. Not someone he’s close with, but certainly someone with access to Facebook and the internet and someone close enough to know his birthday. They say nothing besides a polite hello and rush away quickly. Sasuke spills coffee down the front of his shirt. All in all, it’s a perfect morning.

He gets to the studio ten minutes late because of the congestion on the sidewalks. Everyone else is already waiting for him, their hands like clawed vices around scripts. Sasuke takes his seat far too loudly in the sudden silence of the room, dreading that he even got up this morning, and tries to ignore Naruto’s awkward shifting.

“Hey,” he whispers, when the group have finally gone back to reading lines. Sasuke doesn’t whisper back. It would be stupid. They’re meant to be focussing, anyway.

“Do you have the new script for me?”

“Oh— _yeah, shit,_ here you go.”

Naruto fumbles to hand the paper copy over. Sasuke eyes his hands out the corner of his own eye, trying to calculate the situation.

“Thanks.”

“—we’re still in the pre-production phase, thank God. Sasuke, thank you for joining us. We’re reading over the field scene.”

Sasuke ducks his head and tries to focus on the movie.

Naruto stares at him. Sasuke does his best to ignore this, turning his attention to brooding, to working, to anything that isn’t acknowledging the irritable stare he’s getting from the other boy, who is meant to be his best friend and not someone who could completely forget his birthday. There must be some conspiracy going on, he decides, and feels better about that conclusion.

The conclusion he finally reaches is that Naruto, along with everyone else, have indeed remembered his birthday, but are too mad at him to admit it. He isn’t sure what he’s done this time to deserve such a shitty day, but he figures it must have had something to do with upsetting someone’s feelings, judging by the nature of his punishment. Sasuke tries and fails not to sulk the whole time he’s supposed to be reading lines. It grows increasingly more difficult as Naruto’s stare grows more annoying, boring into the side of his face as the other obviously tries to bite back on saying _something,_ his bottom lip a worried white line beneath his teeth.

As they’re getting towards the end of their first read-through, one of Sasuke’s coworkers turns towards him, nudging him with his elbow.

“Hey, isn’t it your birthday today?”

Sasuke glances sideways at Naruto, the only person in the room with enough gall to share this information. Naruto feigns innocence and starts to splutter.

“It’s your _birthday?_ ”

“Yes,” Sasuke answers dismissively, turning back to his co-worker. “IMDb has that information, I suppose.”

The actor laughs, not catching the subtle dig. Meanwhile Naruto is still acting like he has no idea when Sasuke’s birthday is, even going so far as to question the validity of whether it actually is today.

Sasuke glares at Naruto out the corner of his eye. He’s always been a terrible liar, and now is no exception. As soon as they’re dismissed to go for a break Sasuke rises suddenly enough from his chair to knock it back a little.

Naruto says “hey” again, some half-assed beginning to a sentence that Sasuke is sure is going to be meaningless, and he all but storms out of the room. Fuck this. He doesn’t need this, whatever it is—he has _plans_ for roday, damn it, and whether his friends want to be involved or not he is going to have a peaceful evening to himself to celebrate his pathetic birthday.

He’s about halfway home from the studio when he nearly runs face-first into his girlfriend.

Sakura shrieks in surprise, hands flying up to steady herself against his shoulders. The resulting momentum sends them both crashing chest-to-chest, her shorter frame against his frozen stiff one, both of their mouths gaping open like surprised fish.

“…Oh,” says Sakura finally, ever the eloquent one between the two of them.

Sasuke promptly steps out of her personal space. “Hello,” he says.

“Hi.” They both stand there awkwardly for a moment, the most awkward since way before they started dating. Sakura rocks back on her heels.

“I thought you were busy,” he deadpans.

“I am.” Her eyes fly to his face, searching for something. “Were you—”

“On my way home. I couldn’t sit through the rest of the read-through, so I thought I’d go start on an early dinner.”

“Oh,” she says again. She sounds kind of breathless, he notes, almost as if she was rushing. Her cheeks are tinted pink. Sasuke resists the urge to raise the back of his hand and feel the warmth that blossoms beneath her skin, because he’s meant to be mad at her.

“Well, enjoy your day,” he says, trying to sound as cold as possible, but she reaches for him as soon as he starts to leave.

“Wait! I was thinking… Naruto had something to tell you, actually.”

Anger forces his eyebrows together in a frustrated cue of misunderstanding. “Yeah?”

She nods too quickly. “Yeah. He told me he wanted to take you somewhere for the afternoon. Let me walk you—”

“That’s fine,” Sasuke interrupts, suddenly wanting an escape that isn’t his apartment. He was probably too brash in rushing off anyway, and if she sees him go home, she’ll know that something is wrong. He turns his chin up. “I can walk myself,” he says, and as hard as he tries to keep his voice as clipped and cold as hers was on the phone, he can’t help but let a little of his hurt slip out and bleed into his tone. He doesn’t understand what he’s done to upset her, but forgetting his birthday—acting like it isn’t even a big deal, refusing to call him or text him or even be around him for more than five minutes—surely, she knows that this is uncalled for, and surely she knows that the only reason he hasn’t brought it up is because he’s an awkward fuck of a man who has no idea how to address situations delicately. In other words, he’s _stubborn,_ and he doesn’t know how to bring up topics of actual emotional substance without making an ass of himself. Or hurting the ones he loves. And he really, really loves Sakura, as complicated and mysterious as she makes herself out to be.

“I’ll call you later.” It sounds like an empty promise, and Sasuke responds by not responding at all, giving a half-hearted nod before he turns to skulk back in the direction of the studio.

And he must be imagining it. There’s no way she was smiling.

.

By the time he reaches the studio again, Naruto looks seconds form combusting. He all but falls at Sasuke’s knees when he sees him, babbling about what a dick move leaving was, and how he had to cover for him and tell the director that _no Sasuke wasn’t being a diva he just really needed some air,_ and Sasuke totally owes him for this, so on and so forth. Sasuke promptly shuts him up by mentioning what Sakura said, about wanting to show him something. Naruto’s face lights up in confusion for a moment, before snapping his fingers in the other’s face.

“Oh, right! There’s this, um, totally cool ramen place I was going to show you. For your birthday, man!”

“You’ve showed me every ramen place. And I thought you’d forgotten my birthday.” Sasuke quirks an eyebrow at this, attentive of the way Naruto flails.

“No, it’s not like—like, I knew you had a _birthday,_ obviously, I just forgot it was today. Come on, asshole, do you want me to shout you ramen or not?”

Sasuke shrugs. Ramen or dirt, he isn’t about to turn down free food.

While they walk there, he tries not to think of Sakura and the face she’d made when he’d spoken to her in that icy tone. He tries to think, _good,_ because she deserves it, but every attempt at malice directed towards the girl turns into Sasuke feeling mushy and mopey and wanting to know what he did wrong. He’s so upset about it that he doesn’t even hit Naruto in the arm when he keeps going on one of his tangents, rambling about _connecting_ to the character he’s playing, and how he’s gonna win an award and Sasuke isn’t, etcetera. Eventually Naruto notices his brooding, and even he must have a limit, because he nudges Sasuke’s arm and blinks at him.

“Hey, man. You’re out of it.”

“I’m fine,” Sasuke affirms, lowering his face to his bowl.

“Yeah, okay. You’re fine, and I’m straight. _Come on._ It’s your birthday, you don’t get to be like, sad or whatever.”

“I’m not sad.” It’s a thinly veiled lie. He realises only as he says it that it’s a lie, that he’s actually miserable, and he wants nothing more than to hunt Sakura down and demand to know what he’s done already so that he can do his best to rectify it. To make it up to her. Jesus. It’s his birthday, and all he wants is to be able to shower his girlfriend in affection until she forgives him for whatever it is he’s done wrong.

Naruto looks beside himself with despair, clenching down on a thought so violently that he looks like he’s going to explode if he doesn’t get it out of his system. He checks his watch for about the thousandth time.

“You look kind of constipated,” Sasuke informs him.

“ _Damn it._ Is this about Sakura?”

Sasuke’s eyebrows drop. “Did she say something to you?” He’s fully aware of how childish that sounds, how juvenile and gossipy, but he’s desperate. Naruto shakes his head, lying.

“No, no man, I don’t—I’ve got no idea what’s going on, I just like, noticed, y’know? Did you two get in a fight?”

Sasuke huffs. “No.”

“Well, did you do something wrong?”

“ _No._ I don’t think so, anyway.” He can be a bit oblivious about these things, he’s fully aware.

Naruto furrows his brow, apparently deep in contemplation about something. He checks the time again. This time, his eyebrows shoot up to his hairline and he springs to his feet. “I gotta go! I mean, um, you should totally go back to your apartment. That’s where you were going, right?”

“Probably,” Sasuke says carefully, brows already drawing together again. He’s trying to figure out the situation. Sakura mad at him, Naruto acting weird and fucking off without having to be asked. It’s like the apocalypse or something. “I was gonna pick up some milk at the store first, if that’s okay with you, mom.”

“No, that’s great! That’s perfect actually! Er, only because…you know, if I come over and want cereal, I guess…”

“Cereal,” Sasuke remarks dryly. Naruto nods so hard it’s a surprise his head doesn’t fly off.

“Uh-huh. Well, I’ve gotta run. I’ll see you later Sasuke!”

Sasuke doesn’t get the chance to say anything else, because his friend races off, flying down the road like he’s been waiting this entire time to get away from Sasuke. He has to wait for his confusion to dissipate before he can find it in himself to move again.

On the way home from the grocery store he mopes some more, utterly resigned to living the rest of his life in exile from his friends and his girlfriend. He’s  going over plans in his head to confront Sakura about it, ways to say sorry that won’t make him choke with stubbornness, so consumed that he nearly misses his floor in the elevator. When he gets to the end of the hall he stops. Sakura is standing outside of his apartment.

Her eyes widen when she sees him, her posture immediately snapping into something straighter and more composed. All at once Sasuke understands what’s happening, and despair washes over him like a wave or a semi-truck. His lungs constrict.

“Please don’t break up with me,” he says, as soon as he gets to the door.

Sakura’s breath hitches. “I’m sorry?”

“I don’t know what I did,” he says, avoiding eye contact, “but I’m sorry, and I’ll do whatever I can to make it up to you. Please don’t break up with me. I love you, and it would be a shame if I had to ever convince you I’d stopped for the convenience of us not making things awkward.”

“Sasuke,” she says, her expression somewhere between amused and in awe.

“I know I fuck up a lot. I’m… sorry for that. For me. I don’t mind that you forgot my birthday, but I’d really like to work things out before we act irrationally, or—”

She kisses him. He doesn’t react for a moment, too surprised at the sight of Sakura on her toes, eyes screwed shut happily, a smile tugging up the corners of her mouth so that her lips press tightly against his. She kisses him so hard that he’s a little dizzy when she pulls back, her hand fisted in his shirt and a pleased smile on her face.

“I knew it’d be awesome,” she says, “but I didn’t think you’d react like _this._ ”

“I’m sorry?” He blinks.

“Happy birthday, Sasuke. Come inside.”

He follows her blindly into his own apartment, still trying to catch up with the situation. As soon as he flips the light on, people explode out of the furniture.

The “surprise” that travels around the room is garbled with out-of-time cheers and probably alcohol, and it takes Sasuke’s brain a solid ten seconds to catch up. Then it _really_ hits him. It’s a surprise party. For him.

“Finally,” Naruto is blabbering, moving past everyone else to hug a surprised stiff Sasuke. Under any other circumstances, Sasuke would hit him.

Naruto pulls back with a look of desperation on his face. “She was so mean, Sasuke. She told us all she’d hit us if we even thought about telling you. She was, like, _you have to make him as miserable as possible, okay? Sasuke’s totally a sap, and it won’t work if we’re nice to him._ ”

“Sakura,” he says, his voice devoid of emotion.

Naruto seems to pick up on the situation, and gives Sasuke one last friendly slug in the shoulder before slinking off back to the rest of the people. Sasuke finally looks at Sakura, stricken.

She leans up on her tip-toes and kisses him again. He doesn’t even have the presence of mind to be embarrassed in front of all of their friends, he’s so confused, relieved, in love. When she pulls back again, he slumps his head down on her shoulder, mostly to hide his grin at the way her whole frame shakes when she laughs.

“Were we good? Did we trick you?”

“Trick me,” he mutters, lifting his head again to peer at her. The party seems to have resumed behind him, someone’s (Naruto’s) shitty music playing. “I thought you were going to _break up with me._ ”

“As if I could.” She sounds offended. Sasuke resists the urge to kiss her again, because this time he knows he’ll get carried away.

“I love you,” he blurts out. Her eyes don’t widen comically like he expects them to. Usually when he says this kind of thing, she gets all giddy, lovestruck with the rareness of it. Now, her eyes only crinkle at the corners, and her lip turns up smugly.

“I know,” she says.

Sasuke turns back to the party. He can see Naruto guarding the stereo with a certain level of ferocity, but meets his friend’s eye after a moment to catch a particularly painstaking grin. Asshole. Sakura tugs at his wrist, dragging him towards the centre of the room..

All in all, it’s not a bad birthday.


End file.
